


“Half in love with easeful death”

by fannishliss



Category: Supernatural, The Endless
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tessa tries to comfort Dean about his day of being Death.</p><p>spoilers: 6.11 Appointment in Samarra</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Half in love with easeful death”

**Author's Note:**

> notes; thanks to zagzagael for the prompt!! Thanks to Neil Gaiman for his conceptions of the Endless. Thanks to Kripke, Gamble and Co. for the amazing stories of Supernatural, which inspire these creative works.

 

Dean was in the park tossing a football with Ben. His shoulder felt good, and the boy could run and catch and throw it back pretty well, and if Dean had to jog over to pick it up, that was fine. 

The sun shone down, bright and warm, and the smell of freshly-mown grass was sweet in his nostrils as he smiled and played with the boy, his son.

Then he noticed the two onlookers on the bench, a woman in black and a man in white.  Despite the man’s white hair, he didn’t seem old, but he wasn’t young either.  There was something wrong with his eyes.

The football landed in the grass, forgotten. A cloud passed over the sun.

The woman stood and picked up the ball as Dean approached. “I’m sorry, Dean,” she said.  “You were enjoying yourself.”

“Tessa?”  Dean asked. Concern stabbed through him.  The sky had gone dark.  The man in white was glowing a little, and he was wearing an enormous glinting emerald.  He wasn’t looking at Dean, but  up at the stars, which reflected themselves in his eyes.

“My brother did me a favor,”  Tessa said, glancing at the man.

“He a reaper?”  Dean didn’t particularly care for the uncanny undertaker look most reapers seemed to wear-- he much preferred Tessa-- but the man in white didn’t look like a reaper to him.

“No,”  Tessa said, without elaborating. Her companion seemed relaxed, and kept his silence, gazing upwards. 

Dean looked up to see what was so fascinating about the sky, and the stars wheeled about, rearranging themselves.  Dizzy, thrown off kilter,  Dean dragged his focus back to Tessa.  “Angel then?”  Dean growled, frowning.

“No,”  Tessa said more firmly, closing the subject. She led Dean away from the park to a stand of mature oaks.  The oaks spread out around them, their branches reaching wide.  The stars wheeled overhead. Dean kept his eyes to the ground.

“You seem... okay,”  Tessa said as they walked.

“Yeah?  Look a little deeper,”  Dean muttered. 

“I just wanted to talk to you, Dean,”  Tessa said.  “You were right about the job being rigged.  No one with a heart could do it any better.  Probably your brother, in his maimed state, would’ve done perfectly.” 

Dean winced, rubbing at his face.  Sam had screamed himself unconscious when Death was putting his soul back in him, and hadn’t yet awakened.

“Will he be okay?”  Dean asked.

Tessa smiled, but there was no mirth in her. “What will you do if he isn’t?”

“Whatever it takes,” Dean said.

Tessa glowered at Dean. “Haven’t you learned anything?  The world constantly struggles to right itself in your wake.  You’re like two colossal butterflies of unnatural causality.”

Dean blinked a few times, then shook his head and let it pass. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I get it.  I do.  But when it comes to my brother, I can’t just leave it alone.  His soul, locked in the cage with those two crazies?  Nobody deserves that.” 

Tessa nodded, but looked away. “I did the best I could with the wall.”

“You?  But I thought...”  Dean was confused.

Tessa lifted one eyebrow.  “The old man?  He’s just another aspect, one we thought you might respect.  This one?  You’re just wondering when you’ll get me into bed.” 

Dean had the grace to lower his lashes.  “Nah-- how can you think that?  I mean, uh, would you?”  He looked up, rocking the adorable.

Tessa touched him gently on the chin.

“I love you, Dean.  But when I truly embrace you, I’m afraid you won’t remember it.”  She leaned forward and took his lips.  Dean knew they were warm, soft, just as lush as they looked.  But as she caressed him, breathed him in, his lips went cold and he gave a violent shudder.

She pulled away.  Gasping a little, he leaned toward her again.

“No, Dean,”  she said, pushing him back gently.  Shivering, he tried to catch his breath.

After a while she said, “You did as well as we could have hoped.  You’re a creature of compassion, and sometimes death is compassion -- but  we shouldn’t have made you feel like your urge to be merciful was wrong.” 

Dean narrowed his eyes.  “You set me up.  What the hell was I supposed to think?  I failed!”  It welled up in him again, that horribly familiar feeling of being trapped between impossible choices, his brother’s immortal soul at stake as he struggled to figure out what he should do.

Tessa lightly stroked his cheek. Her hands were cold. “You failed at being Death.  That’s my job.  You succeeded at being Dean, and that’s better than most.”

“Dean Winchester, screwing up the natural order since 1979,”  Dean cracked, but it sounded weak even to him.

Tessa shook her head. “You and your brother didn’t wreck the order.  It was wrecked long before you came along.  You saw what your mother did, to save your father.... you know what Azazel did, to speak to Lucifer in 1972....and long before that, the Angels were twisting things on a scale they won’t admit even to themselves.”

Tessa’s voice took on a more precise tone, her accent perhaps slightly English, and her eyes went flat. “You’re in a unique position, Dean-- outside the order.  Use it.  You’ll be able to uncover secrets no human before you has ever dreamed....”

“Sister,”  Dean heard. He shook himself as though rousing from a trance, and the old man’s stare faded back from Tessa’s countenance.  He blinked, and she was as beautiful and radiant as the man in white at her shoulder.

“We have business elsewhere, sister,” the man said, his musical voice icy, faraway.

“Take care, Dean.  I’ll be seeing you,”  Tessa said.  She didn’t kiss him again before she went, and his dream faded to black. 


End file.
